


Between the Blood and Buttercups

by nitrogen_and_crisis



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotions, Eskel Needs a Hug (The Witcher), Hanahaki Disease, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Eskel, Jaskier Gives a Hug, Lack of Communication, M/M, Mentions of Blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25029583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nitrogen_and_crisis/pseuds/nitrogen_and_crisis
Summary: Flowers grow in the lungs of witchers who dare to fall in love. Eskel now finds himself to be one of those few affected witchers.
Relationships: Eskel/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 17
Kudos: 248





	Between the Blood and Buttercups

**Author's Note:**

> Credit to my friend Charlie for coming up with the idea of the hanahaki disease being a punishment for witchers who fall in love. She also beta-read it for me, so that's cool.

Witchers weren’t really supposed to fall in love. Technically they weren’t supposed to feel anything at all, but especially not love. That’s why, somewhere along the line, love was made deadly for witchers.

Eskel had learned about it while he was training to be a witcher, but it hadn’t felt that important when he was a boy. Some mutagens gave you cat eyes, some of them made you cough up flowers if you fell in love. He didn’t think it would ever happen to him.

He continues to think this until he coughs up the first petal.

The occasion wasn’t anything special, just another night sitting around the campfire with Jaskier. Jaskier, who is trying to turn Eskel’s latest hunt into his next great ballad and making terrible rhymes on purpose and somewhere between watching Jaskier laugh and listening to him compose, it occurs to Eskel that he’s in love. So when he climbs into his bedroll that night and gets struck by a sudden coughing fit, it doesn’t quite surprise him. Neither does the single buttercup petal his spits out. He doesn’t get much sleep that night anyway.

He considers telling Jaskier a couple times — just about the illness, not about being in love with him — but there’s no good way to admit one without the other, and how can he force that upon Jaskier. The only two “cures” are either getting rid of the feelings or confessing and having the feelings returned, and Eskel is certain he couldn’t stop loving Jaskier even if his life depended on it. Which… it kind of does, come to think of it.

But to tell Jaskier would mean asking him to love a hulking abomination. Eskel is under no delusions about how he looks — the unsettling, inhuman edge the mutagens gave him, the hideous nature of the scars that crisscross his body and twist his face — all of it makes for a rather terrible picture. Eskel could never ask that of him, especially because he knows Jaskier would try to love him back so that he wouldn’t die choking on flowers, and he’d blame himself for Eskel’s death when he failed.

So Eskel can’t tell him. But it gets harder to hide with each passing day.

At first it’s fairly simple to hide the petals. While they travel he holds them down until they take breaks and he has the chance to spit them out and hide them. On the occasions Jaskier rides with him he coughs them discreetly into the crook of his arm and leaves them scattered on the trail behind them. When they stay in inns, he resorts to hiding them in his bags and throwing them out windows. The biggest problem is getting Lil’ Bleater not to eat them, as buttercups are poisonous, even for goats.

Well, technically the biggest problem is that almost every interaction with Jaskier has him hacking up more and more flowers. Even small things, like seeing the joy on Jaskier’s face when he performs, or his fussing when Eskel returns from a hunt (regardless of whether or not Eskel was actually injured) or even just listening to his ramblings while they traveled. It all just makes Jaskier more endearing and the back of Eskel’s throat itches as he struggles not to cough.

On one occasion, Eskel manages to finish a contract early and collects on it in time to make the tail end of one of Jaskier’s performances. Jaskier is a colorful whirlwind as he weaves throughout tables, singing an incredibly dirty song for an incredibly drunk audience. Even in the middle of performing, Jaskier manages to throw a wink Eskel’s way during a particularly raunchy line, and petals tickle the back of Eskel’s throat and he offers Jaskier a small smile in return as his heart flips in his chest.

As hungry as he is, Eskel decides to wait for Jaskier to finish his performance before getting dinner. He desperately wants to eat with him and get peppered with questions about his contract and forget about the words thrown his way by some of the townsfolk. But then Jaskier’s performance is over and he’s letting himself be led off towards a back room by a pretty young woman and Eskel feels like he’s been run through with his own sword, faced again with a rather unsubtle reminder that Jaskier can have and spend time with anyone he likes, and unsightly witchers don’t make for good company.

When he finally goes to cough up the petals that accumulated in his lungs during Jaskier’s performances, a couple blossoms come with them.

The blossoms prove to be harder to hide than the petals, harder to hold down, and it hurts more when they come up, but Eskel knows he deserves that much at the very least. 

The blossoms gain stems quickly, and they’re starting to hinder his ability to hunt. Eskel finds himself getting winded more easily, his stamina slowly depleting itself as he struggles to draw air, even when hunting something as simple as a lone drowner, and he knows he’s getting close to dying.

He does his best to make the best of the time he has. He takes less contracts and spends more time with Jaskier. They spend less time staying in inns and more time camping because, selfish as it is, Eskel just wants a few more quiet nights by the fire with Jaskier. The ones where Jaskier plays his lute and they talk and laugh together. Even though they make the flowers grow faster, Eskel thinks each and every one of them is worth it.

By the time the flowers have started developing roots, Eskel has all but stopped taking contracts. He knows Jaskier is suspicious, Eskel can see it in his eyes whenever he dares to meet them, but even so he can’t bring himself to tell Jaskier what’s going on. Even though most mornings when he wakes up he can barely breathe, choked by buttercups, the words are still too hard to say. Instead he writes letters to his brothers and Vesemir and worries over what to do about Jaskier.

He could leave Jaskier at an inn, then crawl out into the forest to die so Jaskier doesn’t have to watch, but he doesn’t want Jaskier to think he abandoned him, and he isn’t sure he could bring himself to leave Jaskier behind at this point. On the other hand, he doesn’t want Jaskier to wake up one day to his corpse, or watch him suffocate to death on the trail. The best thing to do would be to prep Jaskier for the fact that he is going to die before the week is out, and then convince him to leave so he doesn’t have to watch, but he knows Jaskier will never go.

Eskel’s choice is made for him one morning when he wakes up to Jaskier shaking him desperately, surrounded by blossoms and with blood on his lips. He barely has time to prop himself up before he’s coughing again. Between the buttercups and blood, there’s barely room for air in his lungs and it  _ hurts _ . It hurts so much.

“Eskel! Eskel what’s happening? Are you sick? Did someone curse you? Do you need an mage? I know a couple mages, I’m sure I could contact one for you if you gave me a bit,” Jaskier rambles nervously, flapping his hands about. Eskel watches the gears turn in his head, watches it click into place. “Oh god, are you dying? No, nope. Nope, nope nope! I won’t let you die. You’re not allowed to die!” Desperation colors Jaskier’s voice and he smells like fear and even though his lungs are full of flowers and Eskel didn’t think this could hurt more than it does, but it feels like his heart is shattering in his chest and embedding its shards into his ribcage and he feels like the worst person alive. Jaskier smells of fear and sadness and it’s his fault. He messed up and he’s not even sure where he went wrong.

“Jaskier—” Eskel has to pause to draw a rattling breath. “Jaskier I’m sorry.” He sounds miserable and pathetic, even to his own ears, and he feels terribly lightheaded.

“You’d better tell me what’s going on right this instant!” Jaskier demands, but his expression is worried and he still smells of fear and Eskel doesn’t think he can stand it much longer.

“It’s— I’m—” Eskel gropes around for the right words, struggles for the air to say them with. “It’s part of the mutations. Witcher aren’t—” A breath. “Supposed to feel. It’s like a—” Another breath. Another search for words. “A failsafe. For if we fall in love. Our lungs fill with flowers. It’s— deadly if we can’t cure it.” Eskel finishes his explanation gasping for breath. He thinks he’s done an ok job, but when he glances up from the ground to see Jaskier’s reaction, Jaskier looks furious and Eskel’s faint hope that this might somehow end up even a little bit alright withers and dies on the spot. He curls in on himself, forcing up more flowers.

“How can we cure you?” The question is surprisingly gentle despite the look Eskel just saw on Jaskier’s face and the scent of anger wafting off him.

“I can either— kill the feelings, or I can confess and— have my feelings returned. But that was only allowed— because no one can love a witcher.” Eskel adds the last sentence in an attempt to… placate Jaskier? Make him feel less guilty about his death? He feels like Jaskier needs to hear it, anyway.

Jaskier seems to have caught on to the fact that Eskel won’t be falling back out of love, as evidence by the flowers surrounding them, because the next thing he asks is, “Who are you in love with, Eskel?”

Jaskier manages to ask in such a soft, gentle tone of voice, but the question makes Eskel’s stomach tie itself into knots and he dimly registers that he’s borderline-hyperventilating as he shakes his head “no” frantically.

“Eskel, you’re going to die! You have to tell whoever it is that you love them! I… I can’t help you if you don’t tell me who you fell in love with…” And Jaskier sounds so torn apart by the idea that he might not be able to help Eskel that Eskel feels like he’s stabbed Jaskier rather than refused to destroy their friendship but he  _ can’t _ .

He can’t, even as blood and flowers tumble from his lips, alerting him to his impending demise, even as he fights even the smallest bit of air and watches as Jaskier’s expressions become even more frantic and the air fills with the rancid scent of fear. And then he doesn’t have to, because Jaskier is talking again.

“Come on, Eskel, please! You have to! I love you! I can’t lose you!” The words fall out of Jaskier’s mouth like he doesn’t mean to say them and his eyes start to widen as he realizes what he’s said, but then it doesn’t matter because Eskel’s body has decided to purge itself of all flowers.

He doubles over as roots tear themselves from his lungs and he practically vomits blood and flowers and it hurts, hurts like the Trials had, and then it’s over, and Eskel is gasping for breath again, but this time with mercifully empty lungs.

“You… You love me?” Eskel asks as soon as he can talk again. His throat feels raw and he sounds like a small child asking for assurances, but he has to ask, has to be sure, even though the flowers practically guaranteed it.

For his part, Jaskier looks like he’s just gone through the five stages of grief and then circled back around to something between anger and bargaining and Eskel runs through the list of everything he’s ever done wrong and the list of every reason this could all be a cruel joke in less than thirty seconds.

“I love you too,” he mumbles, because he needs to and because he needs Jaskier to stop looking at him like that. It doesn’t do quite what he wanted however, because Jaskier’s face does something  _ very _ complicated, and then he looks like he might actually kill Eskel.

“You— You asshole! You’d rather die than admit to loving me?” Jaskier cries, slapping Eskel in the chest.

Eskel shifts uncomfortably, because it does sound rather bad when Jaskier puts it that way.

“I— You— Witchers aren’t usually— I mean, people don’t really— I thought—” Eskel tries, but any explanation he might give gets worse with each attempt and eventually he gives up trying because of course this is how it would go the one time someone actually cares about him and now he’s ruined everything.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I’ll just…” Eskel gestures vaguely and moves to shift away, fighting the urge to cry.

He doesn’t get very far, however, because one of Jaskier’s hands darts out and snatches one of his. Eskel freezes as Jaskier pulls him into a tight hug.

“It’s alright Esk. It’s alright.” Jaskier murmurs, running a hand up and down Eskel’s spine. And then Jaskier is leaning up slightly to press a soft kiss to his lips and Eskel’s brain just shuts down. With a small whimper, he collapses onto Jaskier, who manages to hold up his very heavy witcher long enough to sink down to the ground gently.

“Why…?” Eskel manages after a while, and his voice sounds scratchy and broken.

“Why what, dear heart?”

“Why do you love me?”

“Mmm… well let’s see… You’re kind, gentle, selfless, patient, scholarly… You always find little ways to show you care for me, even when words are hard. You’re also adorable, and unbearably handsome, even if you don’t think you are. You’ve got a great sense of humor, you’re—” Jaskier cuts off abruptly when Eskel moves to press his face into Jaskier’s doublet, letting out a pained whimper.

“Shh… it’s alright,” Jaskier murmurs, running his fingers through Eskel’s hair. “You’re going to be alright.”

And for the first time since Eskel coughed up the first petal, he feels like maybe it will be.

**Author's Note:**

> I am an asshole.
> 
> I also have another ongoing series for this pairing if you're interested. Yes, it is also angsty.


End file.
